


Immunity and Mischief

by Little_Owl_Lady



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Asgard, Being Human - Freeform, Bodyswap, F/M, Fix-It, Frenemies, Know it all, Nick has a not friend, Odin's Parenting, Original Character(s), POV Original Character, Pop Culture, Riddly is so done, Sassy, Sorcerers, Swords & Sorcery, bit of romance, not a spy nick
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-13
Updated: 2016-05-13
Packaged: 2018-06-08 03:49:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6837922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Little_Owl_Lady/pseuds/Little_Owl_Lady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Riddly Glass 'Knows' things. <br/>lots of things. <br/>Things that nobody should know. <br/>But that's fine, she's been dealing with that problem for years. She even managed to convince Nick Fury that he should bring her on as a consultant to SHIELD. Nope, Riddly's problem is that her fridge in now a portal to an intergalactic prison and that the fates are determined that she go fix a disaster in the making. <br/>Riddly is not impressed and shenanigans follow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

I never expected to open my refrigerator and discover a portal to the prisons of Asgard.   
Who the hell does?   
Because seriously, it was my fridge. 

I was never sure what annoyed me more. The fact that my fridge was a portal to an alien world, or that I had no idea where my food had got to. 

I tried everything to get rid of the portal, I tried shutting and opening the door, in hope of it just going away on its own. I tried turning it on and off again. I even moved it to the other side of the kitchen, but still the portal remained. 

 

I stood before the device, and frowned at the fridge, the fridge remained stoic, and still portaled.   
I was not impressed.   
My fridge was meant to keep my food cold, not suddenly become an inter-dimensional gateway to Asgard. And I knew it was Asgard because that is what I do, I know things.   
But not everything apparently, because I did not know how to get rid of my refrigerator portal.

I sat in the kitchen for a long while trying to figure out what I was going to do about the fridges new talent. I decided that I couldn’t sell the machine; that would not have worked well at all. 

 

“Hello sir, you’re interested in purchasing my refrigerator, well jolly good, what’s that you say, you want to inspect the white good, that won’t work I’m afraid, it’s a portal to an alien world as it stands, I don’t recommend opening it,”

 

Yeah, that would have gone over a treat…not.   
I couldn’t just ditch the thing, what if someone found it and managed to get sucked through into Asgard. I would have been indirectly responsible for that, and I was not keen to be the one that ‘sent’ the first hobo or pratty human teen into the midst of an advanced alien race. 

So the question of what to do with a fridge that abruptly developed the ability to become a portal, was more than a little tricky. 

I decided to deal with it tomorrow, when I had not been at work for ten hours straight. I got up from the chair I had been sitting on, and used it to jam the fridge door shut, just in case. Then went to bed and promptly forgot all about my bizarre problem.

 

Morning came and I got up and went to get myself a drink of orange juice, only to remember that my fridge was doing disturbing things when I saw the chair jammed up against the door. I also recalled that all the food in my fridge was missing…and I was hungry. 

I shifted my weight from foot to foot, tugging at my oversized pajama tee, wondering if the portal had disappeared over night. I decided to check. I moved the chair away from the door, and tugged it open, peering cautiously in.

 

The portal was still there, at the back of the fridge where the back wall should have been. It glowed blue around the edges with a sort of misty moving cloud that ringed a space that look out onto a white walled sparse room.   
There was a man slumped against the wall, as if the weight of the universe bore down on his shoulders. 

 

His hair was tangled cascade of ebony, casting his sharp, pale, featured face in shadow. He was long limbed and elegant, even as he hunched protectively against the wall of white room.   
The part of my mind that knew things sparked up at the sight of him.   
Though I had never before set eyes on him, a word appeared in my mind, spoken clear as a bell, full of love, pain and grief, the Future.   
I made a ragged noise of disbelief and alarm, disturbed by what that flick into the future meant for me.

See the thing was, everyone thought that it must be nice to know what was going to happen next.   
It wasn’t nice, useful yes, but not nice. Because those glimpses aren't always happy, or about me. Mostly I ‘knew’ things about other people not myself. 

There was two ways my ‘knowing’ worked, one was a deep rooted knowledge, a certainty in something that I couldn’t really explain but I understood simply ‘had been, was or would be’ as surely as the earth moved about the sun. The other side was when I got flashes of a future, past or present as real as if I lived them myself, every second, good, bad, joy, and terror, all that moment was. 

I couldn’t say just how long I had been able to ‘know’ things, I just always had. The future glimpses had only started during my teen years.   
I had been confused by them at first, the moments of time that appeared to me snatched from a time that hadn't happened, not yet at least.   
That had led to my grandparents sending me to a good many therapy sessions, which was actually quite a lot of fun. I mean it’s hard for a shrink to get anything out of me when I ‘know’ just what to say to get out of being labeled crazy. 

Just as well too, or I might have my own cozy little padded room with a fancy jacket that bucked up at the back, because for a while there I had trouble distinguishing between glimpses and occurring reality. 

It was not wonderful.

So there I was standing in my kitchen gazing at a strange man that my ‘knowing’ was informing me would be my future through my refrigerator. ‘Knowing’, that all of this, was about to be one of the least weird things that ever occurred in my life.   
I was about to shut the fridge again, and hope that for once in my life I could be wrong, when whatever noise I had made drew the alien man’s attention. 

His head lifted with the smooth, quick gesture of a predator. Shocking emerald green eyes met mine across the room and through the fridge, and widened comically. We looked at each other a long silent moment, before it was broken by the two of us speaking at once. 

“Who are you, and by what magic and foolishness do you breach my prison?” he said, voice rough and silky all at once.

“Did you steal my food?” I asked, all suspicion and irritation. 

He cocked his head to the side and frowned at me, wrinkling his nose minutely, as if he couldn’t quite believe what had just come out of my mouth. To be honest, I was having trouble believing where my priorities were either, but then again, it was in the morning, before nine, and I was hungry, those things should never be combined if sound reason is required of me…

 

The man shifted, rising to his feet in one rolling, sensual move. “I have no need of your food, strange being, only to know how you created a portal into Asgard's most secure holding cell”. 

I shot him a glare noting his condescending tone. “I didn’t, I have no idea why there is a portal in my refrigerator, because first off, who would do that? It’s a dumb idea, and second, I have no interest in breaking into Asgard to start with”. I said snippily, already growing tired of what I ‘knew’ was going to become a long and stressful event.

He frowned at me still sliding closer to the refrigerator portal, but this was when ‘knowing’ came in useful.   
At the very core of me I held the certain knowledge that when I shut the fridge, the portal closed on his side and could only be opened on my end. I was the one in control of the gateway. 

I caught the man’s green eye, and threw him a dazzling smile.   
“Welp, this has been fun and all, but since you don’t know where my food got to, I think it’s time to draw this session to a close. Lovely meeting you, whoever you are”. I then promptly slammed the refrigerator shut, and jammed the chair back in place. 

 

I wondered vaguely if I could duck-tape the appliance shut, and ship it down to my grandparent’s farm, and stash in the barn attic where it would never be found again.   
Or at least not for the next hundred-ish years, and by that time, it would not be my problem. Because i would be...i thought about it for a second before the answer settled in my ‘Knowing’...i would be not here. 

I would need to get a new fridge, but if that was the price of peace of mind and sanity I would cop it happily. With that decided, I went back to my room to get dressed so that I could go out and price what this portal in my refrigerator was going to cost me to replace. 

 

I got some groceries while I was down the street, because the ones that had previously resided in my refrigerator, had disappeared, and while I was not at all impressed with their replacement is still needed to eat.

I have to admit my ‘knowing’, isn’t perfect.   
Sometimes I forget to pay attention to that deep rooted instinct that is telling me not to go in there.   
I am human, and occasionally I think to myself, hey, what ever it is that is saying to me that I should not go, do, say, whatever it is that I ‘know’ I should not, I ignore.   
I reason myself out of my ‘knowing’ even though I am pretty sure that it will come round and bit me in the keester, because like most of humanity, I would like to be normal. 

So I say to myself, it’s a grocery store. What is the worst that could happen, I get attacked by mutated potatoes? 

As if! That would never happen.

Unless that is, that vegetable shop is just a front for an illegal genetic experiment faculty, operating in the basement of the quaint little shop….

I really hate my life sometimes. 

 

That was about when SHIELD decided to turn up, and because SHIELD and I have a very interesting relationship, things got complicated in the form of one Nicholas Fury.   
Nick Fury and I had met on a busy subway when I had just ‘happened’ to be that commuter on the crowded train that had shoved the super spy into a suicide bomber.   
What resulted, was a rather interesting wrestling match, a great deal of foreign cursing, an arrest, with many civilian lives saved.

 

I ‘knew’ that I should keep a wary eye out for Fury, both for my own good and others around me.   
That was the start of my long and drawn out stalking of the super spy. Not that I was really stalking him, I just ‘knew’ where to find him and how to prod him in the nearest direction of growing evil without actually having to interact with him in the slightest.

 

It took him a few years to figure out that all these odd and convenient coincidences had been engineered.   
Then he was hunting me with a vengeance. 

He wanted to know who I was, and he found out, just like I had ‘known’ he would.   
Which was why I was not in the least surprised to discover him sitting in my apartment one day, glaring at me with’ his sinister one eye.  
He had been sitting in my lounge room, opposite the door, waiting for me to come home and be intimidated by him. 

He didn’t expect me to come in, dump my bag by the door, and greeting him as nicely as I would an old friend. 

It would be a lie to say that sometimes I don’t enjoy ‘knowing’ things just to see how much it takes people back when I am not surprised by something that I probably should be. Like Nick Fury in my living room.

“Hi Nick, how are you? You want a coffee or something while we talk?” 

Nick Fury had stared at me darkly. He strode up to me where I had made my way into my little kitchen. “Who are you?” he had snarled in an aggressively pitched tone. 

I had given a snort of dismissal and thrown the spy an arched brow over my shoulder. “As if you haven’t already looked into that, you know exactly who I am. You even know what sort of deodorant I use. You want a coffee, I want a coffee. How do you take it? Milk sugar, no, never mind I know that one. You like your coffee as dark and bitter as your soul. You might as well sit down as we’re going to be here a while, and you can tell your sniper to get comfy, it’s going to rain. I’d say call him off but I know you won’t, cookie?”

 

The ever unflappable Nick Fury had looked a little flapped. Then his scowl had darkened. “Who do you work for?” 

I turned around to face him, two mugs of coffee in hand. “The deli round the corner, three days a week, sometimes four on a Wednesday if I’m lucky”. 

Fury’s eye twitched. “What!” he spat in as near to confusion as the man had ever come in the last twenty years, I felt rather pleased with that, I do so like to keep people on their toes.

“Where I work, the deli, boss is a bit of a rat, but he keeps things clean and the pay is decent, so I stay”.

Nick looked like he was about to chuck a blue fit so I stopped messing with him. I shoved the coffee into his hand, ‘knowing’ that he would take it on reflex, and then flopped myself down onto one of the chairs at the table. 

“This isn’t the weirdest thing you've ever heard of, and we both know it. I’m just going to come right out and get down to the core of things. I ‘know’ things. I know you are an elite spy, and should not be messed with. I know that when you were twelve you busted your science teacher to the cops for running an illegal meth lab. I know that there is a sniper two blocks away with a target on my head if I try anything and by some miracle take you by surprise. I know that a bird is about to fly into my window in one minute, and I know that you are going to believe me that I know things because you’ve already been stalking me out for over a month and still can’t figure out what on earth is going on with my weird morning wave to all you people are hidden about. I’ll tell you, it’s because I ‘know’ where they are”. 

 

I gave Fury a level look. 

 

“I ‘know’ things, and I don’t mean in in an ‘I read it in a book, or somebody told me’ way. I know what has happened, what is happening, and what will happen. It’s not perfect, sometimes I miss things, or I make the mistake of ignoring that part of me that does the ‘knowing’, because I am human and we make mistakes. But the point is I do ‘know’ things, things that I shouldn’t, things that could save or destroy lives, and so I found you. I can’t make a difference, not really, I know how to influence things so that a ‘likely’ outcome may occur, but I don’t have the resources or physical ability to do anything about some of the things that I ‘know’. So that day on the train when I ‘knew’ you were a spy for a very secretive part of the government, I shoved you into the terrorist, because you could do something about it, and I have been metaphorically, pushing you into bad guys ever since”. 

 

Then the bird flew into the window. Some ratty pidgin that my neighbor insisted on feeding on the roof.

 

Nick Fury looked at the window, then looked at me, I shrugged and sipped my coffee.   
Then, Nick Fury had smiled, and it was weird and disturbing. I ‘knew’ that he was genuinely pleased, and plotting something.   
“No”. I said flatly. Fury frowned, “No what, exactly?” he asked feigning innocence. I gave a snort, “for someone who is a spy, you are a lousy liar, try again.”   
“Or,” said the intimidating man, “you just ‘know’ my tells to know when I am lying.” I shrugged again. “Does it matter, the point is, no. I am not joining your merry band of evil resistors, I’d be dead within a week.”

It was Nick’s turn to snort, “You can’t know that, with the proper training you could be…”  
He trailed off when I had shot him a withering glare. “Right, point taken, yes you would know wouldn’t you.” I had given a stiff nod.   
Nick took a long swig of his bitter black coffee, and had hmmed thoughtfully. “How would you feel about becoming a consultant for SHIELD Miss Glass?” I smiled at him then took another swig of my drink. “That, Mr. Fury is more what would suit us best I think”. 

 

And that was how I became a private contractor for SHIELD…Nick and I had known each other for a few years now, and had developed an odd but workable friendship between the two of us. Nick would turn up unannounced at my house expecting bitter, strong, black coffee; and the chance to run a few ideas past me. 

I always ‘knew’ when he would be there, so he never bothered to give me a heads up, but it worked for us. Nick Fury didn’t have friends, but if he did, I would have been one of the few he considered one. I ‘knew’ that for a fact. 

Fury was not a man that needed approval on what he did, but he didn’t like losing good men and women needlessly either.   
The spy, now turned director, checked in pretty regularly just to find out if I needed to ‘metaphorically’ shove him and his people into any bad guys. 

Usually I rang to call him if I knew something was going to be happening, the only problem was when I couldn’t tell him for certain what might happen, only ‘knew’ that something was going to go down. Other times I could give his specifics, like when I told him to defrost the guy in the ice his researchers had just found, not bury him. That would have been a huge loss to our world, in the glorious form of one, Captain Steven Rogers.

Thankfully they had defrosted him, (sure he had chosen to ignore my instruction not to lie to the poor chap, resulting in distrust and suspicion from the good Captain whenever Fury was involved in anything. (But hey, I can only tell him what I ‘know’ not make him obey what I tell him to do.) 

After the Manhattan invasion he had appeared in my lounge room to command coffee, because I ‘know’ how he likes it, and to inform me that I was more than a worthwhile investment the day he hired me and decided not to shoot me in the head….I gave him a baleful look at that, and informed him that someone was going to blow his favorite motorbike up in two days, I recommended he not be on it.

 

And low, Fury and the girl were friends.

 

Today was one of those days that Fury decided to turn up. I figured that it had something to do with the mutant vegetables, but I never ‘knew’ entirely with the man. He had that many pots on the stove top at once, it gave me a headache trying to figure him out.

I wandered into the apartment, already talking to the spy before I had even closed the door. 

“Now I get that you have important questions to ask me, but bear in mind I was just attacked by mutant vegetables, and am now covered in pieces of said mutant vegetables. Thanks to your gun happy minions. Not that I mind really, it saved my hide, but they could have just bagged the critter rather than blowing it. So I have to say to start things off, I am going to go have a shower, and you are not going to open my fridge, because very bad things would happen if you did. Not sure what, but I ‘know’ it would be bad, for you. Flick the kettle, I’ll be out in about fifteen minutes.” 

 

I spoke as I walked, and by the time I was finished I had grabbed a fresh change of clothes, and was shutting the door of the bathroom on Nick Fury’s exasperated expression. I still found it fun to rile him up, even after three and a half years.

The shower was glorious. I was not a fan of having dead mutant potato in my hair so it was nice to clean the remnants of the nasty little thing out. When I came out of the bathroom I found Nick standing in front of my refrigerator, (that was now duct-taped shut) glaring at it with signal minded (and eyed) intensity. 

I flopped myself down at the table with a sigh. “So what brings you to my humble abode, O mighty spy master?” I asked casually as I fiddled lazily with the pepper shaker. 

Fury turned to face me and arched a brow at me.  
“Do I need a reason to come and check up on you?” He asked evasively. I sighed and leveled him a look of dull waiting, hoping he would get to the point instead of dancing around it like some elaborate game of Marco polo. 

“Yes,” I said after a moment of extended quiet “yes you do, because you always have a reason to everything you do, you never don’t.”   
Nick grinned wickedly at that. “So you’re saying, that I have to have a reason other than the fact that you were at the bust on the illegal genetics lab.”   
I gave a huff of annoyance. “It was a veritable shop, how was I supposed to know that it was a front for a secret lab of vegetable mutation?”   
Nick gave me the dirty one eye glare. “Shut up,” I muttered irritably, knowing perfectly well what he was getting at.   
“Yes I know, I should have ‘known’ and I did, but I didn’t listen, not like you always do either, so don’t go lording to me.” 

 

The spy looked reluctantly amused as he sat himself down across from me at the table. “My agents inform me that you were unharmed. And that you managed to avoid the exploding vegetables, with stunning and floundering accuracy. You continue to amaze me Riddley Glass.” 

I smirked at Nick. “I continue to amaze me too, who knew that when faced with exploding potatoes I make a decent acrobat.” 

“I noticed,” said Fury with a wicked glint to his eye, “we have the whole thing on tape, it’s going to be used as a training exercise.”   
I shot him a long suffering gaze.   
“So, my fridge is an intergalactic portal to Asgard.” I said with no warning or permeable. 

Nick’s head jerked up wide eye. “What!” He spat in shock, yeah, I still had the ability to take him by surprise. 

“It stole my food.” I said with irritation.   
Nick rolled his eye, “Can we go back to the part where your refrigerator is an intergalactic portal please.”   
“Why,” I asked, “it’s pretty straightforward really, last night my fridge developed a new talent and now it’s a portal, would you like it, I was just going to stash it at my version of area fifty one, but if you really want it, you can have it. Just be warned, the guy on the other side is a bit of a manipulating sod.” 

Fury was giving me the dirty eye. “Your refrigerator is a portal and you never felt the need to ring last night and tell me about it?”   
I shrugged unrepentant. “Why bother, you where going to be here today anyway, I figured, just tell you now.”   
Nick sighed and propped his head on his hand.   
“What am I going to do with you, you are almost as much a handful as the Avengers, but of course you know that, don’t you.” 

I grinned at him widely ‘knowing’ I was still the favorite.   
“So you want the fridge or not!” I ask blandly and wave a hand over to where it stands duct-taped and useless.   
Nick favored me with a long suffering sigh. “If I ask you who is on the other side of that portal, I’m not going to like the answer am I?” Said the spy with a pinning glare. 

I shrugged unhelpfully and pull a scrunched up face. “That depends if you like ancient Norse deities with family issues, and a mental state that is perpetually set at ‘bag-of-cats’.”   
Nick went unnaturally still at that.

“LOKI.” He said in a sort of choked disbelief. “You have LOKI in your FRIDGE!!!!” Nick had slapped a hand against his face and dragged it down across his features, while trying to figure out how to deal with this new, and unwelcome, information. 

“So it would seem.” I said absently, finishing the last of my coffee.   
“Do you have any idea what sort of problems this could create fore whole of humanity?” Asked the spy in in grim desperation.   
“Yes.” I said flatly.  
Nick gave me the one eyed squint of unhappiness.   
“What?” I asked in bewilderment. “You think that I want him in there, it’s not like I opened the fridge yesterday thinking to myself, hmm, I think that I would like a nice bowl of mentally unstable, angst ridden, Norse deity for dinner. That sounds lovely.” 

Nick snorted and refuses to laugh at something I ‘know’ he found genuinely amusing. I settle back in the chair and threw a dark look at the refrigerator.   
I wanted it gone, because if it didn’t go soon, I ‘knew’ it was going to cause me trouble. “Can we send it up to Asgard?” I ask thoughtfully. 

Nick shook his head mournfully. “One way gate, I’m afraid, they open it, not us, even with all Foster and Stark’s meddling.”   
I sighed and tapped my fingers in the table discontentedly.   
“How long will the item be safe in your custody?” Asks Nick bluntly. 

I frowned and let my mind drift, feeling out the ‘knowing’ part of me. “A while, not very long though, that’s all I can say.”   
Nick nodded, stroking his mustache thoughtfully. “It will have to do, we don’t have anywhere to store it at the moment, we are still rebuilding bunker 22, as you know. You’ll have to keep it here for now, it’s safest with you as it stands anyway.” 

I was not terribly thrilled by Nick’s solution, but he was right. I gave a thoughtful hum.   
“I’ll move it out to the barn this afternoon, it should be pretty safe there, safer than here. Someone is going to break into my apartment tomorrow. Course it’s not going to go the way they planned, your people will be here waiting for them, so i’ll leave them a note not to open the fridge.” 

Nick looked irritated. “Did you just say that someone is going to break into your home?”   
I shot him a sweet smile. “Yes Nick, someone is going to break into my house, besides you, that is.” 

Nick got a nasty look in his eye. He doesn’t like it when I’m in danger. I’m not a fighter, and not a field agent in any way. 

I’m an informant, a valuable one, but most of all, I’m his ‘not-a friend’.   
I reached over and touched my fingers softly against his hand that rested on the table, showing none of his tense anger.   
“Nick, it’s fine, I won’t even be here, I’ll stay at the farm for the weekend, maybe even take the fridge with me; you can sort the whole mess out clean and quick.” I spoke gently, trying to convey my trust in his ability to keep his ‘not-a-friend’ safe. 

Nick gave a grunt, which was his way of graciously thanking a person for kindness. I wondered vaguely if Nick had ever NOT been emotionally stunted. I got the feeling, no, that was just Nick, it made him good at his job.


	2. Chapter 2

The drive to the farm was rather on the long side of things, but that was fine, because the sun shone a warm golden glow upon the earth, the air held the scent of spring.   
I drove along, the fridge rattling in the back of the red pickup truck I had borrowed off a friend.   
The plan was to take the fridge to my grandparent’s farm, to hide it down the back barn that was only ever used by myself, and all my weird things that I found and ‘knew’ would probably course the destruction of the world as it was, if I didn’t stash it somewhere. Hence why the fridge was being moved. 

I arrived at the farm a little after dinner time, at around six, I drove the truck straight over to the back barn and backed it up to the loading ramp.   
I climbed out of the vehicle and make my way to the back and swiftly see about stashing the fridge in the barn, possibly up against a wall so that even if the tape comes undone the door wills still be jammed shut.

It took me a few minutes to get the heavy appliance off the back and down the ramp, and inside the barn, and then from there more pushing and shoving to get it to a clear space of floor.  
I was all ready to head down to the house and pig out on all of the amazing food I knew that gran would have made as soon as I rang to tell her I was coming down earlier this week, when I felt a ‘pull’ at my ‘knowing’ it was sharp and insistent, and blasting a resounding wave of ‘something bad’ at me. 

I didn’t have time to figure out what ‘something bad’ is, because it was coming fast, whatever it was.   
I cast about looking for a safe place to hide, and looking about at the stashed mounds of ancient relics and enchanted antiques hidden about, I ‘knew’ that there is nowhere to go, but then there was that pull again in my ‘knowing’ and my head turned to the left where I stowed the refrigerator, and it occurred to me, that I was going to have to use the portal contained within, and that my life sucks, because I finally worked out what ‘something bad’ meant.

‘Something bad’ was someone from the shadow council that commands SHIELD. Tracking me down and working out that I am Nick Fury’s mysterious informant, and wanted my ‘knowing’ for their own nefarious purposes. It was confirmed moments later when the low drone of a Quinjet filled the air and the thud of many booted feet hitting the barn roof echoes about. 

I heaved an exasperated sigh at the whole thing, because really, if they thought that they could capture a woman who literally ‘knew’ everything, when she was paying attention at least.   
You would think that they would try something discreet and non threatening, so as not to twitch the instinct. But no, they think that if the slap me with enough intimidating people in black, then I will obviously go along with their plans for world domination.   
BZZZZTTT, wrong.

I had to make the decision quickly, hopping I hadn’t missed any of the facts for what was about to go down, because if I had, I ‘knew’ it would result in a great deal of ‘not good’- ness for me.   
I hurriedly started to rip the tape off of the fridge door, all the while looking about at the places I ‘knew’ they were going to come into the barn from.   
This was not going to be fun.   
I ripped open the fridge and peered warily inside, and frowned in irritation when I noticed that the portal had changed locations.  
Now the glowy blue edged portal opened out into a sumptuously decorated office of some kind. I frowned and shook my head as m ‘knowing’ gave a sort of static like fizzle. That had never happened before… 

Behind me one of the windows shattered and I threw a look over my shoulder to see a powerfully built man in combat black land among a shower of glass and raise a rifle loaded with what I ‘Knew’ were knockout darts.   
So I had a choice, one that I did not like.   
I could stay on the outside of the fried, and definitely have bad things happen to me, or I could dive through the portal, and take my chances with the fizzy static on the other side. 

I dodged a dart and dove into the fridge, hauling the door shut behind me. 

Going through the portal was like having a mouthful of pop rocks.   
Only instead of the crackly tingle being in your mouth, it was all over my body.   
Weird, and a bit underling. 

When I came out the other side, I hit the floor in a messy pile of limbs and disorientation, hard.   
Where ever I had come out, I ‘knew’ that the gravity was denser here, by exactly how much, I rather not consider. 

The air was thinner too, in an aged overly clean sort of way, almost metallic, that thought rang true with my knowing, so I figured that it was manufactured somehow.   
I dragged myself up from the floor, and then wished I hadn’t.   
Because there she was.   
The woman from my dreamers. The woman who was the reason my knowing had crackled like static at me.   
What was about to happen already had, in that weird time warp that so often goes hand in hand with magic, there was no avoiding it, I was about to have my body stolen.


	3. Chapter 3

When I was younger, before I learnt to listen to my ‘knowing’ there was a child psychologist that my grandparents sent me to, not long after my parents had vanished from the face of the earth, and my funky ability had kicked in. 

I’d been having nightmares, waking up angry, outraged and desperately distraught.   
The psychologist had been nice, and she had genuinely wanted to help me. I had ‘known’ she did, before I understood that even if someone wants to help, sometimes they can do more harm than good if they don’t comprehend the reality of things.

But I didn’t know then, or if I did, I didn’t understand ‘knowing’ it.

Sandra had asked me to tell her about my dreamers.   
She’s sat watching me with her big blue eyes full of earnest fresh faced graduate knowledge, and her clip board propped up on her knee.   
I’d been thirteen, awkward skinny and confused about life in general. 

“Tell me about what you see in your dreamers Riddley, why do they upset you so much?” she had said to me, leaning forward all gentile voiced.   
I’d looked her in the eye and said the truth.“They are not dreams, they are things that happen, or will in my case. It's already been and gone for her, that’s how time paradoxes work. They make a good old mess of things. Most things you can reshape so long as you know they are coming, so that they do or don’t happen the way things would naturally go, but with a paradox, there is really no getting around them.”

She’d stared at me with a very odd sort of expression and made a sort of ‘do go on’ gesture. So I had.  
“You see, for Audra, she has already stolen my body, it’s happened in her past, it’s set in stone, but for me it’s yet to occur, because we exist in a sort of looped time knot. No matter what I do, Audra will always wind up stealing my body, there would have to be someone else to break the lock, but there isn’t, so it’s going to happen. My future is a past incident, and I can’t do a thing about it.” 

Sandra hadn’t understood, and quite rightly for her limited view in life, though I had gone round the bend.   
That little explanation and heart to heart had gotten me three months in a psyche ward and alienated from all my school peers.   
Thus I never again tried to explain the paradox of my future and learnt to listen to my ‘knowing’.   
The dreamers were eventually replaced with others, some that I could even use, and then as I got better at paying heed to my knowing, eased off, I sort of figure it was my subconscious trying to get me to listen, or whoever it is out there that is in charge of whatever the hell you call what I do.  
I never forgot those dreams.   
Those moments that played through just as they happens now.   
Like scripts of a play. 

Never let it be said that I was not rebellious. 

“Hello Audra, I was wondering when this would happen. Knew it would be soon, but I must say, I don’t envy your timing, shall we get on with this body snatching business, you have places to be, and I have a tantrum to throw.”

Audra blinked slowly at me, in a controlled, irritated way.   
I folded my arms and jutted my chin out stubbornly, it was going to be weird to do that in the future and know it wasn’t really my face making the expression. 

Audra straightened up off the impressive desk she lounged against with lazy grace and a low chuckle. “So I am to take it that my spell weaving was successful and that you are Knowledge . I will not have to stand on ceremony then, when I tell you that this is going to be painful. For you, not me. I am made of sturdier stuff.”

I rolled my eyes. “Look, Audra, I understand that you feel the need to gloat and live up your moment of evilness. After all, you wasted six century planting this and tracking down the spell weaving for the child of the great tree, or whatever it is that they call me, but my frankly my dear…” I shrugged and made an unimpressed, noncommittal noise “I don’t give a damn”. 

Audra scowled at me, her pretty face contorting in irritation. “You are greatly disrespectful of the goddess you might choose to spare you from what is about to come.”

I threw my head back and laughed long and humorlessly, before straightening and sobering.   
I fixed the blond woman with a steady gaze. “You and I both know that was never going to happen. You want something that you can never have Audra, and will pay a cost for it that I refuse to know, because some things I prefer not to have the knowledge of.”

Audra’s already icy stare turned arctic. “So be it.” She spat.   
I just shook my head sadly, she thought she had it figured out, well, she didn’t.   
I sure as all get-out didn’t, so there was not a snowballs chance in hell of her having it figured. 

Audra stood to her full height, cascades of golden blond haired billowing about her as the magic she summoned thickened in the too clean air.   
Her sapphire blue eyes gleamed with contained power, while a not at all sane smile pulled at her seductive lips.   
It was the first time in about fifteen years I did not ‘know’ what was going to happen next.   
I sucked in a breath and forced myself not to panic, panicking would not help. 

The Asgardian stepped out onto the floor in front of me, and I noticed for the first time that there were a whole lot of things scribbled on the wood beneath my feet. 

There was a surprising lack of pomp and show.   
Which told me that despite her dramatics, Audra was a competent sorcerer.   
I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. 

On one side, this would likely be over very quickly.   
On the other, it meant that there was no doubt left in my mind that she could actually pull this off, and I was about to become someone else.   
Or at least be stuck in their body. 

Audra’s voice rolled about the confined room in an eerie melodic chant, seeming to layer upon itself and build power in the air, like ozone before a storm.   
I felt a hysterical giggle crawl up my throat, because all of this was terrifying really, and even I could only deal with so much.   
The incomprehensible lines circles and squiggles began to glow beneath my feet, growing in brightness as Audra needed the peak of her incantation.   
All at once the world seemed to tear in two, and with agonizing clarity I was aware of my soul being peeled from my body and thrust into someone it didn’t belong to. It was as awful as I knew it would be. 

Knees that weren’t mine gave way under me, and I collapsed to the floor in a tumble of fine linen and silk.   
Peering through cascades of golden blond hair I could see my own form shifting from where it was crumpled among the burnt and blackened remained of the spell.   
Audra lifted herself from the ground and tossed my thick dark brown hair out of her face with a gesture that looked nothing like my own casual and easy actions. 

“Well now.” Said the now me woman, somehow managing to make my voice sound crisp and haute, and absolutely nothing like me at all. “I have a world to conquer, so I will be on my way. Enjoy your stay, it will only be short, your soul will burn out soon enough in my body, your feeble kind were never meant for Asgardian greatness.”

She flicked her fingers at the wall and a portal opened up, framed by swirling blue clouds. So she still had her magic, even if she was in my body now.   
Clearly Audra was not as smart as she seemed to think herself.   
If she had kept her powers, then in all logical likelihood I had kept my own knowing, and all she got out of this swap was an unusually done face-lift. 

I dragged myself into a half sitting position, held up by my trembling arms too weak to stand.   
“I really don’t want to sound cliché, but in this case it is true, you will not win Audra. There is no way on earth you will get what you want out of all of your plotting and planning.” 

My face, or rather her face, contorted into an icy sneer.   
I looked on in grim fascination, I had never in my life made that expression at anyone, and all at once I knew that as soon as Audra came face to face with my ‘not a friend’ Nick Fury, he would know she was not me, and try very hard to kill her. 

I also knew that to undo whatever Audra had done to switch us, the Asgardian had to be alive.   
“Audra.” I said, my voice rich and commanding, and utterly unlike my true voice, which was more playful and husky with velvety tones.   
She halted from where she was about to step through the portal and tossed her/my hair over her shoulder with a withering glare. “What mortal?”   
I gritted my/her teeth in irritation reminding myself I needed her alive and as undamaged as possible. “When he asks you why he should let you live after what you’ve done, tell him, that glass doesn’t break when riddled with sand.” I said looking her hard in the eye. 

Audra frowned at me, her lips curling in a sneer, and I wondered vaguely if she was capable of any other expression or if she had only ever mastered the one.   
“Who is ‘he’ and why would I do that?” she said harshly. 

I gave a razor-blade smile, all teeth and no humor. “Oh, you’ll know him when you meet him, and believe me, you’ll tell him because you Audra, if nothing else in the universe, are self-serving and desperate to survive.”  
Her/my eyes snapped with fury as she spat “We will see who is desperate to survive when your world is cast in chains.” Before she stepped headlong into the portal which promptly closed behind her.


End file.
